The card came in the mail.Before I disclose its contents, things need
be said about Brantwood and Hohman,
Indiana medical paranoia.The scourge known as Polio hung as a prospect
over both Indiana
communities.I’d liken it to the
threatening sickle in Poe’s short story The
Pit and the Pendulum.

The terror of the disease
discouraged many parents from sending their children to public pools.WickerPark swimming pool, at
the height of the pre-Jonas Salk vaccine days, might as well have been the
Black-Hole-of-Calcutta as far as my Mother was concerned.

Fortunately, she got a grip on her
fears so that I learned how to swim there, taking aquatic instruction on the
dog-paddle and other more advanced strokes.This led, one lonely morning, to my survival.I was 100 feet from shore when I found myself
“over-my-head”, the term for any depth more than 6 inches greater than a young
swimmer’s height.The deep in this case was a mere five foot,
sufficient to drown me.I panicked.There
was absolutely no one to save me.No WickerPark
life guard, no life raft, inner tube, rubber ducky air-float,puffy water wings, plank of flotsam,
nothing!I was finished.

Then came the miraculous, an
inexplicable inner calm, the kind I’d seen my hero cowboy Hopalong Cassidy get when a desperado drew his gun.My skinny limbs began that perfunctory canine
stroke learned in the urine warmed waters of the WickerPark
pool.

Thank God! Mom had acquiesced, exposing
me to the ravages of Polio.Had I been
infected, I, nevertheless, might have survived, though in an iron lung.That would not have been the case without the
dog-paddle I learned there.I would
have drowned.

Incidentally, my Uncle Bob did contract
Polio as a youth.It left him with an
impaired ability to swallow.However, he
is well into his 90s, at this writing, having long outlived all in my family
who never got the disease.Again,
heredity reigns.

Brantwood’s little Lords, of which I
was among, had no private school nearby to shield them from the influence of
the common elements, i.e., children from “across the Monon Railroad
tracks.”The options were the CulverMilitaryAcademy, hundreds of
miles away though a very fine option for incorrigibles or the near by St.
Thomas More Catholic school.Though but
five miles distant, Mom’s Missouri Synod Lutheran leanings scratched it from
the list.Besides, the family income was
limited.

The public links to education it would be, LincolnGrade School.Conveniently, Lincoln’s campus was but a nine iron shot
from Brantwood, walking distance for every privileged lad and lassie in the
realm.

Remarkable about LincolnGrade School
was its roofline.It had the shape of a
240 foot long by 50 foot wide gutter.Often, rainfunneled from the roof’s open ends like Niagara’s
roaring waters, drenching those of us without umbrellas.

Should a flood of biblical
proportions befall the BrantwoodianKingdom, the populace
could flee to that roof.It surely would
serve as ably as Noah’s Ark.In fact,those divine specifications given Noah
revealedthe providence of LincolnSchool’s architect.The Ark
hull and the school roof were identical.

But what about that card that came
in the mail?It had to do with LincolnSchool’s medical vigilance.The school nurse operated a mini-clinic
housed next to the principal’s office.A
long list of unusual medical tests, procedures, and preventive practices were
regularly performed on the 400+ juvenile victims, ages, 6-13.

There was the tattoo torture
inflicted on every one.Protest was
futile.It was for the miniscule chance
that fate ordained a ghastly accident, a torrential blood spurting from a
wound, each spurt syncopated to the final beats of an expiring heart.

“If only we knew the child’s blood
type, perhaps, there might still be time to save the tyke. “

“Doctor, this child is from LincolnElementary School!”

“Yes.Nurse check his
right side.They tattoo all of ‘em
there, just like prairie cattle.”

“Ah, ha, there it is!”

“He’s an A-positive type. Praise the
Lord!We’d got a dozen pints of A+ in
the cooler!”

“Thank God for those Lincoln school
administrators.That nurse…she’s the
Florence Nightingale of the HighlandIndependentSchool
District!”

And that was the justification for
the pain each of us endured.I’d liken
the pricks of the multi-needled tattoo “burner” to a small dose of the State’s
electric chair.It sort of buzzed into your
flesh, burning, pricking, injecting the vial blue ink
subcutaneously beneath the epidermal layer.

That night, I undressed to the
waist.With Mom’s hand mirror,
positioned like a submarine’s periscope, I looked for the image stamped
forevermore as that brand identifying me as a Lincoln Lion.`

“There it was.”But…

“Oh…no!”

“It didn’t take.”

Somehow those needles didn’t make
the vertical line in the plus (+)
mark dark enough.You couldn’t tell if I
was a +(plus)
or – (minus) .

“Yes, there it is.He was one of those LincolnSchool
kids.Shoot him full of his blood
type.A-NEGATIVE!”

Agh!

No, the card wasn’t an official
acknowledgement of my blood type, though they did give me one just before that
branding.

But, considering what I know
historically about my classmates, (A half
century has passed.) to my knowledge, not one has benefited in the way the
nurse said we would from getting thattattoo.

Another of LincolnSchool’s
required medical procedures was the Hair and Scalp Surveillance Exam, a most
bizarre and humiliating undertaking, sure to encourage a case of “hookey” the
day it was scheduled.

The dreadful process was confined to
a dark closet in the nurse’s office.The
juvenile subject sat rigidly erect.Gloved in latex, the nurse deftlyraked a comb-likesickle in slow random swipes through the
subject’s head-hair.Her other hand
grasped some kind oflight-ray device that looked like a prop from a Frankenstein
movie.A supernatural appearing
pinkish-purplish beam flooded her view of the scalp so that the entire room lit
up as though nurse and subject were encapsulated in a pink Christmas tree
light.

The comb-light apparatus was said to
ferret from the scalp hidden vermin like lice, dandruff, and colonies of
indescribable microscopic and , of course, potentially
fatal bacterium cultures. But it was my mother’s dire warning which most
terrified my tender psyche,

When the nurse gave her prognosis, I
sighed in relief.The note sent home
said only,“Jerry,
has dry scalp.Try another shampoo.”

For yet another year, I was RINGWORM
free!

That card mentioned earlier was not
the scalp exam result.It was much more dire.

Those annual darkroom parasitic
searches spawned unforgettable tales among the waiting victims.Perhaps, this was the genesis of that
tapeworm story often told in hushed tones of disgust and derision.More likely it was a result of reading the
tri-fold health education flyer sent home with each of us.

In this “worm-warning-tri-fold” was
a sketch ofthe
step-by-step tape-worm infection process.What began with walking out-doors barefooted, progressed through the
stages of tape-worm infection, including maturation of the worm, and ultimate
intestinal infestation in the host human carrier.The closest thing I could compare to the
descriptive process would be those early 1960s lunar landing posters showing
the launch into Earth orbit, trans-lunar injection (the journey to the Moon),
and the ultimate Moon landing.

In comparison, launch for these
tape-worms was your naked feet.Innocently stepping on a nest of their lava was the same as launching
them into the cosmos of your body.Like
the Moon mission, the second stage worms climb intravenously into and up your
legs.Their mission success comes when
the morbid beasts reach your bowels, i.e., stomach, colon, intestines, large
and small, as well as your throat.At
that time, comes the momentous words,“The tapeworms have landed!”along with the
sequent pronouncement of the child, “Mom, I’ve Got a Problem.”

The ravishes of a tape-worm colony
sucks the nourishment of Mom’s daily three course meals of salad, meat, and
desert into growing longer and longer worms.The flyer said the tapeworm was a “parasite” but the person wasa “host”.This had to be a lousy name for the affected
person.My idea of ahost was a person who invited a guest
into his home. Certainly, no one would welcome the visit of a tapeworm.

But the horror story heard often
about the LincolnSchool campus dealt with
a method for getting the tapeworms, off-the-moon, i.e., out of the body and
back to Earth.It seemed that a wholly
tapeworm infested family, moved into the neighborhood from the south, i.e. fromacross the
Creek. (These were, of course, not Brantwoodians.)

Despite enormous helpings of pig
jowls, collardgreens,
liver, and wild possum meat, the “youngin’s” were “wasting away,” thin as an Indiana corn stalk.Apparently, scores of miles of tapeworm
torsos serpentinedthrough each child, from gullet to
anus, consuming most of that southern cooking.

Now, these southerners were
more worldly wise than Brantwoodians, finding kindred wisdom among the
Hammond-Hessville populace, not needing medication, surgery, or mechanical
means for tapeworm deliverance, the extracting of the elongated beasts.“The milk-cure
would save those kids.”These
southerners must have been neighbors of Shep’s coarse Bumpus clan, but their
remedy for tapeworm dated back to the Lewis and Clark Expedition.Those pioneers knew well the medical benefits
of the “milk-cure” just as surely as the fatal consequences of the “milk sick”,
an early form of milk malignance that killed within a day of consuming the
cow’s contagion.

Unknown to Brantwoodians, tapeworms
cannot resist warm foamy milk any more than a Wabash Street Wino can cheap wine.That
gaggle of southern kidskneeled down, side by side, mouths open wide so not to obstruct
the passage of those tapeworms.A red
wood picnic bench sat beneath their four open mouths.The process required each child to breathe
solely through the nostrils of the nose.This prevented the trekking tapeworms from choking the hosts, i.e., the
children.

A shallow pan was placed on the
bench before each of the infected tapeworm carriers.From the kitchen came the irresistible
tapeworm pottage, a porridge of warm foamy Pleasant
View Homogenized Dairy Milk.

The return to Earth phase was
ponderous for the worm as well as the juvenile host.It was said, to consume several hours of
gagging, vomiting, choking, spitting, screaming and moaning.But, be assured, the mission was always
completed successfully.Needless to say,
I seldom walked bare footed outside 8728
Woodward Avenue.

This had to be one of those “urban
legend” tales that today’s Internet blog-sites parrot.But in 1950, at LincolnSchool,
validation true or false was impossible.My Dad had sort of a fetish for these kinds of ghastly and altogether
nauseating stories.His favorite,
supposedly true, reminds me ofA Christmas Story scene where the Bumpus’
hounds devour the family Christmas turkey.

Again, a nameless family of
unfortunates surrounded the Thanksgiving feast prepared by the clan’s
mother.The center piece, as expected,
was the 20 pound turkey, cooked hours overnightto a tender, juicy perfection.

Because of the family’s generosity,
wanting to share their modest blessings, (After
all, it was Thanksgiving!) they had invited a street person from the tawdry
real estate under the Ridge Road Creek bridge.This child of ill-fortune is given the honored seat at the head of the
table.

To begin, the perfunctory blessing
is said over the mannaplaced before them.Then,
the pitch fork sized turkey fork is lifted, poised to spear the big bird’s
chest, preparatory to drawing and quartering the bird in traditional
Thanksgiving butchery. That is when it happened.It was the guest interloper, not really his
fault, but, nevertheless, just as terrible.There are sneezes and there are SNEEZES of which the event was of the
awful latter case,a
spewing, harking, quaking, inner rumbling of phlegm and expectorant blasting
from the vagrant’s mouth, lips, and nasal passages with such force as to be the
envy of the hosers of the BVFD, the
Brantwood Volunteer Fire Department.

The glistening golden brownish
hairless chest skin of the family bird caught the brunt of the blast, instantly
bathed in the slimy, foamy saliva, mucus and general mixture of Mogen David and
less pricey imbibings.The Turkey’s chest color had changed
hue from golden brown to a creamy, silvery white.Like an oyster,it was slimyto touch. Only the bird’s large size had
shielded the family from residual exhaust leaking pass the fowl’s carcass.

At once, the smiling facades of the
hungry feasters darkened with thoughts not unlike those entertained by
incarcerated felons awaiting their final meal.What choice was there but to lift the contaminated bird, its platter,
along with the stuffing falling from its open neck wound from the table?The only alternative was for the fowl to be
washed, reheated, and re-served?And so
it was.

Dad enjoyed the conclusion of his
tale, watching the grimace on my face when I asked, “What happened then?”

“That night the entire family,
except for the vagrant, came down with the dysentery.”

I didn’tknow what that word meant and didn’t
want to show my ignorance so I found it in the dictionary.It meant“a sickness in the lower bowels, with
diarrhea that becomes mucous and hemorrhagic.”Now, I didn’t know what hemorrhagic meant either.So I looked it up.The definition reveals just how repulsive
Dad’s tale was.It meant a discharge of
blood.“What a Thanksgiving that must
have been!”

Enough of Dad’s fantastic stories,
the sad look on Mom’s face, her measured, carefully chosen words as she handed
me that card told me it was not the stuff of tattoos, hair lice, worms, or
stressed bowels.It had to be life threatening,
and it was…Next to Polio, the grim reaper stalking Brantwoodian youth in
the 50s was the dreaded malady Tuberculosis.TB for short.No one escaped those screening X-rays at LincolnSchool.Some kind of a huge rolling van docked like
an oil-tanker in the parking lot.It
looked more like one of those Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobiles than a medical
diagnostic facility.

The 400 Lincoln Lions and Lionesses
filed in line for several days hearing those words,“Inhale deeply young man.Hold your breath.Yes, its cold on
your chest but only for a moment.Be
patient.”The shutoff of the machine’s
buzz, with the simultaneous and abrupt, “NEXTSTUDENT!” told me it was O.K. to step
back, put my shirt back on and leave.

Except for that icy contact with my
bare skin, the test was no more bothersome than the shoe-fitX-ray diagnostic machine at the
Highland Department Store.At least
that X-ray-ershowed
my toes wagging in my Tom McCann’s while I watched.I didn’t need a card to come in the mail
weeks later telling me my shoes fit.

The card came two weeks to the day the
X-Ray-Mobile motored North onto Highway 41, perhaps, in route to Shep’s Warren
G. Harding Elementary School in Hessville, 5 miles closer to Lake Michigan’s
shores than Lincoln School.There,
other mere youths in the prime of life might, also, receive the same card…”We
have found a suspicious indication of a potential problem on your recent chest
x-ray.

At once, the scene of a choking,
convulsing Tiny Tim came to mind, immediately followed by Boy’s Town’s Father
Flanagan at Mickey Rooney’s bedside ministering last rites.I protested out loud, “Mom, I can’t have TB,
its winter.The WickerPark
pool’s been empty for three months.”My
thinking had made that pool the single and only place on planet Earth one could
contract Polio, Tuberculosis, Whooping Cough, and lesser-maladies like Cancer,
Typhoid, or Cholera.

My official Doctor Kildare
immediately became World Book page 8192 of volume 16 which was “T” among the
lettered volumes of our set of Encyclopedias.Carefully, I studied its prognosis.I was not comforted by these words, “Tuberculosis is one of the most
serious infectious diseases, and today…causes about one tenth of ALL HUMAN
DEATHS…sometimes called THE WHITE PLAGUE because it is SO DEADLY…It may attack
all INCOME GROUPS.(Even
Brantwoodians!)

The worst was yet to come from my
good Doctor World Book.“Many a child
has been infected by careless spitting of others.”

“My God,” I thought, “Dad’s
Thanksgiving story could have had a much worse conclusion than dysentery.It might have been TB infecting the family.”

Then came
the symptoms, “chills, fever, pain in the chest, cough, labored breathing, and
lung congestion.”(I had them all though
it was likely from simply breathing the polluted “yellow-tinged air which hung
over the steel mills.)

“So,”I wondered, “What stops the symptoms
and heals the disease?”Again, my Dr. World Book Volume T, M.D.minced no
words.Its “bedside” manner was as
subtle as a root canal,“These symptoms last four to twelve weeks ending in DEATH.THERE IS NO KNOWN CURE.”

I was a “dead boy walking”!Likely, I wouldn’t make it to summer
vacation.No CampPokagon this year, no more WickerPark
pool.I couldn’t even retaliate and
give the guy whose sputum I walked through back his stupid disease.

On the World Book page was a 5X7
inch photo of that cumbersome x-ray machine, x-raying a young woman with a
nurse standing close by pushing the woman against that cold framework.The apparatus looked like something the
Merciless Ming would subject my hero Flash Gordon to endure.Closely, I studied the photo’s caption,
hoping against hope, for some hidden flaw in the process,“The X-Ray is a Quick Way to Detect Tuberculosis, it
shows SPOTS ON THE LUNGS.”

“God no,”I wept,“That’s what the post card says, “a spot was
on my x-ray.”It was over for me.If I’d only have had a less serious malady
like a mile long tapeworm feeding on Mom’s predictable Thursday liver dinner,
or a Ring Worm infestation that kept a nylon woman’s stocking over my hair for
the rest of my life to keep me from infecting others, or if I’d only had lice,
or bed bugs, or leeches, or pin worms…anything but TUBERCULOSIS!”

I read on:Sometimes victims survived a bit more than 12
weeks, but in such cases, “No child should live in a room where he can infect
another with this dreaded disease.”

At once, the scene imaged before
me.I was prostrate in a hospital bed,
a plastic tent over me, attendants attired in defcon space suits bringing my
last meal.I was a “Typhoid Jerry!”Knowing death certain within the
school year, I felt my eyes begin to tear, “I wouldn’t even make 2nd
Class Scout,I’d
die a lowly Tenderfoot member of the Eagle Patrol.

About to close Volume 16, I noticed
the following topic, “Tuberculosis Society of America.”One of their fund raising methods was
offering Christmas stamps.“Small
consolation,” I fretted “if I died within the 4 week window of survival, I just
might become a listed victim for the year 1954.”

The saying goes, “A coward dies a
thousand deaths but a brave man but once.”By the time of the scheduled retest on a hospital’s X-ray machine, I was
well on my way to that thousand count.But my symptoms were not getting worse.Perhaps, the steel workers were striking and
the open hearth pollutants had abated, but things were definitely improved.

The retest confirmed it.It found no evidence of Tuberculosis.I would not die a Tenderfoot after all.